Dolphin Watch
Doodle’s dandy ride
By ANN WEAVER
Article published on Thursday, Sept. 18, 2008
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| Photo by ANN WEAVER |
| Safe at mom’s side, six-week-old Doodle peers at the bright world above before catching one of the first boat rides of its little life. The beret-like thing on the right side of its head is a remora, another story for another day. |
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Isn’t it always about timing? Recently, it was our good fortune to be in time to see young Doodle take one of its first wild rides on the waves of a passing boat. But it took the right mom and the right boat.
It happened one easy September day, yet started long before with the right mom. DD1 is one of our local dolphin mothers who surfs. We’d been studying her for years without ever seeing her surf.
So, to my eye, she started surfing abruptly. In a memorable moment last summer when just three weeks pregnant with Doodle, she surfed the voluptuous waves of a passing yacht for over a mile, leaping again and again. The exhilaration of that sparkling scene is recorded in the Dolphin Watch story of the same name.
Around noon this September day, DD1, Doodle and two teenage dolphins meandered a favored stretch of water. DD1, recognizable for her signature split fin, alone returned to this part of the study area after wintering elsewhere. In past years, she would have been one of several females who returned to hunt these shallows for the summer. Have the others really forsaken these bays?
Familiar with its natal neighborhood by now, Doodle is currently focused on experimenting with the main mode of dolphin propulsion, the tailstock. Sandwiched between mom and the teens, Doodle intermittently popped up as if its tiny tail had wantonly wiggled out of control.
Teens Sharkey and Pastel present curiosities. Sharkey has been seen with DD1 constantly since Doodle was born. This is unusual. Sharkey weaned from its mom Leading Dent just this spring. Heretofore, we’ve seen two patterns in newly weaned teens: swimming alone for several months or swimming in riotous mobs of other teens. Rather like a human teenage girl who socializes with the neighbor lady and her toddler instead of high school chums, Sharkey’s constancy with a mother-calf pair is a third pattern. More curiously, Sharkey’s mom Leading Dent has a calf the same age of Doodle. They swim in nearby bays. Why doesn’t Sharkey hang out with its own mom?
The other teen, Pastel, is one of those mysterious dolphins who seems to know us better than we know it. We first recognized Pastel in 2006. Or let’s say that’s when it had developed sufficient dorsal fin marks for us to recognize it. Pastel’s easy behavior around the boat suggests it’s the offspring of a local mom we’ve studied, the idea being that we couldn’t recognize the scar-free calf but spent time with its mom so the calf knows the boat. Solving this mystery requires genetic-based kinship studies, not currently part of our work. Who are you, Pastel?
DD1 is fairly habitual. She takes breakfast in the broad Seven Sons Bay throughout the morning and then meanders up and down a small nearby stretch of water, dozing away the hours of midday.
Given Doodle and the teen’s occasional bursts of animation as they went, DD1 wasn’t dozing much this particular day. But she seemed up for it.
She was up for something else as well. A small yacht approached from the south. Handsome but not as bottom heavy as new yachts, it created just a hint of the rolling wakes that dolphins usually surf. Still, it must have looked right. Abruptly, the dolphins headed for it.
Capt. Heidemann and I were stunned. Are they going to surf? Isn’t Doodle too little?!
The dolphins vanished. We wandered for a time, searching without finding. So we resumed the survey route, heading north in the direction of the disappearing yacht.
Half a mile up, we spied dolphins squiggling in the shallows. DD1 and Doodle had surfed, all right, but just briefly. Now socializing among themselves, Doodle popped vertically out of the water (spyhopping) and dropped back down on mom. Hovering near, she gently nudged and nuzzled her little one.
Then we saw two dolphins in the distance to the north. Most likely, that’s Sharkey and Pastel. Let’s see if they come back to DD1 and Doodle! If not, we’ll check them out next.
Soon Pastel slid by the boat, Sharkey sailed past at a safer distance and they headed right back to resume their morning social with mother and babe.
All four dolphins had surfed those gentle waves. The more capable teens rode the ride to its end and then came back. DD1 rode with Doodle briefly and then dropped off. What does that say about what DD1 knows about her baby?
All in all, it was a good time and good timing for all of us. May time be on your side today as well.
Dr. Weaver studies wild dolphins under federal permit GA1088-1815, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Send her an e-mail at acweaver@tampabay.rr.com or visit www.dazzlingdolphins.com.
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Article published on Thursday, Sept. 18, 2008
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